


What'll It Be?

by DarkBlue



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brotp, Complete, Drarry, Drarry for days, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter Friendship, Linny adjacent, M/M, Minor Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, One Shot, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tumblr Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 14:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12819207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkBlue/pseuds/DarkBlue
Summary: Hermione Granger, witch extraordinaire, and legislator with the Ministry of Magic, finds solace and comfort in effecting real change on a smaller scale: muggle bartending. By giving her customers potions that will help solve their problems, she begins to get a few outcast witches and wizards who was to avoid the press of mixed and magical bars.Harry comes to her for help dating Wednesday nights, especially in the new realm of 2001 internet dating. Every guy he matches with only wants sex, and it's not exactly easy dating witches and wizards as the famous Boy Who Lived.Draco Malfoy comes in after his shifts on Thursday nights, and a bizarre and tentative friendship begins. As Hermione searches for the right ingredients to fix her friends, one disastrous night the two meet at the bar, and it's up to Hermione to mix the right amount of cleverness and interest for them to overcome their prejudice to see each other for who they are.





	What'll It Be?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by the amazing and talented staganddragon on tumblr at https://marauders70s.tumblr.com/post/167859146732/strictly-drarry-staganddragon.

It wasn’t as if it were her  _real_ job, after all. It was just that working within the Ministry of Magic, petitioning for legislation, and dealing with - well -  _wizards_  sometimes made Hermione miss her muggle roots. She had gone to the pub around the corner from her and Ron. It was a notoriously “Muggle Pub” without any even mixed society to make it an interesting one, which suited Hermione perfectly. She knew she would never run into anyone she knew, much less anyone from work. She couldn’t handle the fame, sometimes, of being twenty three and known as a hero of the Battle of Hogwarts. She had never appreciated Harry’s plight before; it has always seemed something so trivial to complain about in the wake of Voldemort and actual death. 

While drinking quietly at the bar, she had noticed a small sign, just a silly piece of printer paper that declared “bartender wanted,” and she had just had enough wine and a few neat scotches to think it could never be harder than  _potions_  was. The application was in pen and paper, which in 2001 was still common enough but strange enough in the wake of the computer age to make Hermione giggle (not quite soberly). She had then gone home, promptly forgotten all about her night, and was therefore surprised to receive a call offering her a trial period the very next week after regular work hours. 

It suited her to work weekdays instead of weekends. She didn’t care for the weekend bartenders anyway; the guys wore tight fitting black shirts, and the girls wore loose ones that fluttered uselessly as they bent over to find that ‘pesky grenadine’ that was somehow always hiding just under eye level. Plus, Ron was getting increasingly wound up at the Auror’s Office, probably because Harry was too. Harry was desperate to clean up the last of the war, but privately Hermione thought he was scared to finish also, because four years later the amount of connection and activity to Voldemort was slowing to a trickle, and every time she saw Harry she could see the fear in his eyes that his life was losing its meaning. 

“You and Ginny could have another go of it,” Ron even attempted half-heartedly when they were all sitting around drinks in a mixed pub. Their service was conducted by pixies with trays, invisible to muggle eyes. The magical lot usually never abdicated their tables, to the annoyance of any muggles wandering in. Yet still any witch or wizard was always assured a chair as it was only a small matter of asking another chair to appear quietly tucked in a corner, driving muggles up the wall why they hadn’t seen and taken it before even though their consciousness told them it had been unoccupied the whole time.

Harry had only laughed morosely. “Nah,” he said, shrugging. “The only thing Ginny and I ended up having in common is quidditch and liking both Oliver and Alicia.”

“And she’s happy,” Hermione had defended, glancing at Ron sidelong. It was still a tense time for muggles in same-sex relationships, and despite the wizarding world long having accepted them, she knew acceptance in idea and acceptance in fact were miles away from each other. 

“I know she is,” said Ron quickly. “And I’m glad it was Luna. Someone we knew. And someone in her year. And all that.”

“I think you were both  _too_ similar,” said Hermione to Harry practicably, taking another long pull and holding the burning firewhiskey on her tongue. “With Luna and Ginny...they’re so different as to always be explaining things to one another, instead of arguing over the little differences. But Ron is right.”

Ron choked on his drink, and Harry wrinkled his nose at Hermione, their brother-sister code of  _did you really have to pick on Ron_. It was a game they both enjoyed immensely, though Ron was often glibly unaware. 

“I’m right?” Ron sputtered, wiping hastily at his mouth. “I mean...of course I am.”

Harry was actually smiling, but his smile dimmed as he noticed the shuffling and whispering of the tables around him, people beginning to openly stare as their table garnered immediate notice. 

“I just mean you need to date,” said Hermione, briskly placing money on the table, and standing up. “You want to-”

“Visit George?” agreed Ron hastily, also slamming down his empty cup to stand. 

Harry nodded glumly. “Sure.” And they turned on the spot to drop in on one member of the Weasley family who was still far worse off than any of the others. 

 

 

* * *

 

But Hermione hadn’t snubbed the opportunity to work in a muggle pub, even if she had needed a crash course in drink making over the weekend (one of the times when being a witch really was such a blessing as she read a step by step instruction guide with moving illustrations). And on Monday, she had shown up in a long sleeved black tee and dark jeans (still far too low in the early 2000s and paired with an atrociously loud and chunky belt that would be hilarious in later pictures) to her first shift.

The first shift was not as bad as Hermione had expected, though she had hoped it would go perfectly. She still messed up several orders, and only hasty and quiet wandwork beneath the bar had fixed them before the owners had tasted them. However, whatever her spells added to the flavoring, she had more tips in the Monday night for the best made old fashioned and mint juleps than the manager had ever seen a new hire make. She was offered the job by two in the morning.

“I can’t work every day,” she said apologetically. “It’s only a second job-”

“Monday, Wednesday, Friday?” countered the manager.

“Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,” corrected Hermione firmly, and he grinned ruefully. 

“You could clean up on Fridays, with drinks as good as yours.”

“We’ll see,” said Hermione serenely. 

On the first Wednesday, she had invited Harry to get away from the stares during and after work. He had cheered up considerably as he had studied the book Hermione had learned from, helped by an attention misdirecting glamor that left muggle stares sliding over him without notice or recognition. 

“I can’t believe  _you_ , of all people, are tending bar.”

“It’s oddly relaxing,” said Hermione, leaning over the counter on her elbows to look at the page he was on. “And I figured that this way I never have to worry about making a  _bad_  drink, because any drink I’ll make will just be cleaned up by my spellwork regardless.”

“Well, I like it here,” said Harry, glancing around at the loud televisions and the most recent rugby match. “Not a magical person in sight.”

“I know,” sighed Hermione, and Harry grinned at her, wrinkling his nose again both in code and to work his glasses up his face. 

“You too, huh?” and Hermione nodded. 

She took the moment to press an earlier issue. “But your life really is too one dimensional Harry.” She always said his name in the earnest, two syllable plea when she wanted him to listen. “Honestly, you’re so focused on one thing, what’s going to happen when that thing is over?”

Harry shrugged moodily, his eyebrows drawing down into his empty glass. Hermione quietly made him another one and slid it across the bar, actually giggling a little when it sloshed over his wrist, and he looked up, grinning back at her. 

“Very smooth,” he praised, but took the drink nonetheless. After sipping it, he looked back up at her, a grin flitting around his mouth even as he tried to scowl. “Did you slip something in this?”

Hermione felt a guilty little smile starting. “I may have slid a cheering charm in there too. Just a small one on an ice cube that will dissolve as the drink does. Low grade.”

Harry shook his head. “Honestly, it’s no wonder you aced your potions N.E.W.T.s your last year.”

“You still could-” Hermione began, but she knew it was useless before she even finished. Long before Harry even shook his head. They had gone round the argument too many times. 

“I can’t do it ‘Mione,” said Harry, sipping at his cheering laced drink. “I just...so many people died there. I don’t know how you did it.”

“McGonagall pulled off the repairs splendidly,” said Hermione, a bit proudly. “And there are new statues of all those who-”

“Hermione,” and Harry’s voice was very strained. 

“Here,” and she pulled a beer from the tap. “This one is plain. And on me.”

“Thanks,” said Harry, sighing into the foam.

“You know who I still can’t believe did it?” asked Hermione curiously.

“Malfoy,” said Harry into his drink, not looking at her. His black hair was getting long, making its untidiness more of a snarled mess than usual. His glasses hid the dark rings under his bleary eyes, and his angular jawline was tight and pale under drawn skin. “I know.”

“I just...I still can’t believe,” said Hermione, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t have. It would have been so hard with all the comments and all that he-”

“I know.”

“But he wanted to be a healer,” said Hermione, actually taking out a rag to wipe down the bar and glorying in her trite but new little sanctuary, even two days on the job. “And you need the scores for that. Even if you’re a...well especially, now.”

“Do you see him?” Harry’s question was odd to her, but she didn’t show it. 

“Now and again. We don’t actively hang out. But there were so very few of us that eighth year that they gave us a commons to ourselves in some of the old faculty suites since the house dormitories were so unbearable.”

“Unbearable for you, but impossible for Malfoy, I would bet.”

“I don’t know. Slytherin is just eager to prove themselves again,” said Hermione, a tad defensively. “I would bet that with inter-house unity and the work they’re putting into their core values that the prejudice against Slytherin changes full circle in the next fifty years. I wouldn’t be surprised if our grandchildren thought Slytherin the noblest of houses.”

Harry snorted into the emptying stein of beer. “Yeah. Right,” he said, smirking a bit. “And I loved my aunt and uncle.”

“Harry,” chided Hermione, but without heart. It was impossible to correct him. Any survivor of child abuse should never be told they probably loved their abusers  _deep down_. 

“Is he good?”

“Malfoy?”

“Yeah. Is he a good healer?”

“By all accounts, I think he has to be,” said Hermione, quickly flitting away from Harry to take three drink orders and fill them, flicking them quietly from beneath the counter as she gave them back and saw the awe and delight light up the faces as they tasted them. 

She came back to Harry, smug with her tip jar so full at an early stage of the night. She would have to empty it soon. 

“Why by all accounts?”

“Hmm?”

“You said Malfoy has to be good by all accounts.”

“I just mean with...with the mark and the prejudice...for him to be considered as good as the next healer he’d have to work three times as hard. For him to be considered a  _better_  healer means he must really be gifted. He’s probably not unlike you. Obsessed with his work. Pouring his whole self into it.”

“Don’t do that, Hermione,” Harry said testily.

“Do what?”

“Compare me with Malfoy.”

“Harry-”

“With a  _known Death Eater.”_

_“Harry.”  
_

“Yes, yes, alright,” Harry grumbled. They both had fought too many times to not know that they both considered Malfoy’s position untenable. Harry privately knew in his gut that Malfoy would have never killed Dumbledore on the Astronomy tower. His wand was already lowering. And like with  _cruciato_ , the killing curse you had to actually  _mean_  it. There was the sickening swoop in his stomach as he tried not to remember. The bitter tang in his mouth at the cold hatred in Snape’s face as he performed Dumbledore’s last request with hesitation. There was the difference. On some level...he had  _meant_ it. Whatever Dumbledore had did to him over the years...whether it was trapping him at a school of bad memories, or forcing him to spy, or even trying to teach Harry occlumency, Snape had harbored a deep and festering hatred of Dumbledore. Enough to  _mean_  his killing curse. Even if the hatred was only a tiny part of their relationship, it was enough.

_“My son...is he alive?”_

_“Is it him?”...”I’m not sure.”  
_

“Harry.”

Harry looked up at Hermione, blinking. Her face was concerned, brown eyes surprisingly hard with the same, bright knowledge and intrusive memories. “Go home, Harry,” she said with a half smile. 

“Oh, but,” and Harry glanced around the quiet Wednesday pub. It would be  _impossible_  to wait for Hermione and still get to work in the morning well rested, but at the same time well rested was far beyond his ordinary scope. There was nothing to do at the flat he used to share with Ginny. It was boring aside from the muggle television he had purchased, and even Harry wasn’t  _that_  into sports. 

“You can come back tomorrow,” Hermione promised, and Harry felt a strange swamping sense of relief, and he nodded. 

“If you aren’t careful,” he said. “You’ll be getting the whole magical neighborhood in here soon.”

Hermione only rolled her eyes at him.

 

 

* * *

  

But, as it turned out, it was partly true. Hermione’s claim to fame in bartending grew. Her bespelled drinks also seemed to have a different effect: people really talked to her. The way they did in movies and cartoons. And Hermione couldn’t help but feel  _obligated_  to help their trivialities the way great power begot great...something or another. 

There was the man down the street who couldn’t get his wife pregnant. He had just been to the doctor and found out, and was so mortified at his low sperm count he had stopped in for a fortifying gin and tonic. It was only the work of a moment to apparate to her flatshare with Ron to grab a basic potions kit and her collapsible cauldron to store on a shelf of the bar cleverly transfigured into a stainless steel mixing bowl.

“It may not be as bad as you think,” Hermione had promised him, giving him another round of gin to mask the earthy taste of the fertility potion. “I bet it’ll feel different in the morning.”

The next week he was back for a celebratory drink or five, drunkenly exclaiming that one night with Hermione’s drinks had made him impregnate his wife. Despite the absurdity of the suggestion by an obviously intoxicated man, Hermione’s helpfulness did not end there.

There was the boy of eighteen who was already starting to bald. Two drinks in, Hermione’s fingers couldn’t stop preparing the hair tonic when he confessed he didn’t want to look like his Dad because he didn’t want to feel like his own hands were his father’s when he looked in the mirror at night.

There was the homeless woman who came in down on her luck. Felix was a purchase, not a brew, but the next time she saw Hermione she had a steady job at a crisis shelter as a counselor, not a patient.

It was as Harry had spotted, however. It was too much of a good bar, and the rapid upswing in popularity (and Hermione’s tasteful little cleaning and brightening spells) that revitalized the pub completely. And it drew in an entirely new clientele: wizarding outcasts, looking for a quiet place to drink. 

Hermione didn’t want to serve Gregory Goyle the first time he came in. But she reminded herself she was a witch, and she worked in legislation, and she was entitled to her own time and interests. But she needn’t have psyched herself up. Goyle ignored her as completely as he had when they were in school. And aside from being fatter than ever, he didn’t say one word as he drank, only went away and left a respectable tip on the bar behind him. 

There were a few other Death Eaters who ranged in, though none (thankfully) who had ever fought Hermione herself. Honestly, the “death eater” death eaters had either all been killed, or rounded up by Aurors like Harry to serve in Azkaban. The ones left out were ones like Goyle who had the mark and the name, and had never been given one assignment.

Harry was in quite a lot, because Hermione was helping him set up a muggle online dating profile. Harry usually had to be quite drunk before he would consent to work on it, but Hermione could feel the nervous energy rolling off of him that told her quite plainly that the Boy Who Lived needed a good shag, and also that Harry was quietly, and desperately lonely for affection and companionship that she - dating Ron- just couldn’t provide full time.

Even Ron and she were less frequent with her new job. He supported her, knew it was her way of de-stressing, and had even come to see the place once or twice, though Hermione knew he had hated it for its strange banality and foreignness the way she sometimes prickled with discomfort in an all-magical-take-it-for-granted setting.

Whether it was Goyle or by other grapevine word of mouth, but one Thursday evening, Hermione was both surprised and unsurprised to see Draco Malfoy quietly come in. She and Draco weren’t exactly  _friendly_  but they were on speaking terms. It was quite hard to not be in a graduating class of twelve. And Draco was something Hermione hadn’t thought much about during school: smart. He was in her Advanced Potions class, and she realized even without Snape he was talented. It was fortuitous he was going into Healing, for a talent like his with charmwork and potions shouldn’t be wasted on a banal desk job...like hers.

“Granger,” Draco was wearing his lime green and magenta St. Mungo’s robes with the crossed wand and bone sigil on the back seal, and Hermione tried very hard not to giggle. She must have failed though, because grey eyes narrowed as Draco drawled: “Have I committed some horrible muggle faux pas?”

“Nice outfit, my man,” said another bar patron, sidling down the stools. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Draco went pink, and stammered something that made Hermione laugh. She had never seen Draco Malfoy actually  _flustered_  by something so simple as a come on. She supposed he must be prejudiced against men hitting on him. But as she watched, to her astonishment, he nodded, and she quickly made up two, embarrassed at her own assumptions as Draco awkwardly and fumblingly tried to chat up a muggle man, sparing her death glares every few sentences when she twitched, sending a ripple of amusement through her entire voluminous pile of curls.

It - predictably - failed miserably, and Draco leaned over the bar to hiss at her. “Help me with these!” tugging at the lime collar as Hermione quietly passed him a napkin and said loudly: “Yes sir, the bathrooms are just down the hall.”

Draco glared at her, snatched the napkin from her fingertips, and stalked out, returning in far too short of a time to even have washed his hands in a muggle outfit she kept under the bar for Ron, tied neatly in a spelled napkin to open in circumstances Ron was too vacant - or stubborn - to change beforehand. 

“These are atrocious,” Draco informed her, sliding back into his seat and wearing the itchy glamor of attention misdirection. “A sweater? And how do these pants even  _stay_  on?”

The baggy carpenter’s jeans and oversized lumpy sweater made by Mrs. Weasley looked so incredibly foreign on Draco Malfoy that Hermione took out her phone and snapped a picture. Draco did not react, likely because he did not know what on earth she was doing with the small flip open rectangle in her hand. She kept the photo for a rainy day, and tucked the mobile back in her jeans.

“Can I get you a drink?” she asked sweetly.

“You  _work_  here?” said Draco, white hands fluttering uselessly for a place to land, looking appalled at the cleanliness of the place, a quirk for cleanliness that Hermione shared with two parents as dentists.

“It’s part time.”

“I can get you a better job than  _this_ ,” sneered Draco but Hermione only slammed a glass on the bar.

“I  _like_  it here,” she shot back, and the glass broke.

“Temper, Granger,” drawled Draco, and they both glared at each other a long moment as she quickly repaired the object before anyone came to see if she needed help cleaning up. Draco finally blinked. “White wine, if you have it.”

Of course a stupid posh ponce like Draco Malfoy would only drink  _white_  wine. Instead, Hermione reached for a list. “Chardonnay?” she suggested.

Draco made a reviled face. “Too fruity.”

“Pinot grigio?”

“Too dry.”

“The riesling is quite good.” It was a personal favorite of hers. “It’s German.”

“I’ll take it, I suppose,” said Draco heavily. His family was German. The muggle wine would be tasteless. 

The cheering charm seemed too obvious for a palette as discerning as Malfoy’s - especially after their Potions class together with only a blonde and shy Hannah Abbott to break the atmosphere of three students in the dreaded advanced potions. Hannah was studying to be a nurse, while Draco a healer, and Hermione...well, Hermione was going into a desk job and had only only done it for her personal pride. Stupid.

“This is...not terrible,” said Draco in surprise. 

“I like it.”

“So you’ve been experimenting on muggles?” Draco said it so blandly, so nonchalantly, it took Hermione a moment to realize what he had said. 

“What? NO!” she said it so loudly the manager stuck his head out of a back room to make signals at Hermione, asking if she was okay. 

“Relax I was...what’s the muggle-ism?...having you on.”

Hermione only gaped at him before she signaled the manager all was well. 

“By all accounts, your drinks are special,” said Draco, sipping at his own. “Except mine. Why?”

“Yours is from a bottle,” said Hermione, a bit faintly, and a bit distractedly, her mind racing into all the possible directions this conversation could go.

“What would you have put in mine, may I ask?”

Hermione couldn’t help the little smile that tugged on her lips. “Aside from poison?”

“Ah, jesting,” said Draco lightly, and he set down his wine glass. His grey eyes were intense, penetrating. “Did you really hate me so much, growing up?”

Hermione hesitated. On the one hand  _yes_  but on the other hand...”I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Sometimes I just...felt sorry for you.”

“ _Sorry_  for me?” sneered Draco.

“My parents once told me that an animal only snaps if it’s in pain.”

Draco looked stunned. 

“So...Mum always said when kids were mean it’s because...because people were being mean to them and filling them up past their level of meanness so it spilled out to others. She told me I must always be deep and calm. So I wouldn’t keep the chain going. So I could absorb the meanness and not give it away.”

Draco had let his eyes close back up a little, their haughty deep set reminiscent of his aunt. “That’s...very wise,” he said at last, picking up his glass again to sip at it.

“But actually,” said Hermione, with a self-conscious laugh. “Mostly people tell me...tell me what’s bothering them before I fix them the drink.”

“Ah the ye olde bar tendre tender-er trope,” said Draco morosely. “How quaint.” He itched suddenly, violently, at the wool over his chest, causing the overlarge sweater to slide around what Hermione realized was a very muscular but slight frame. He had kept in quidditch shape. 

“This thing is a greenhouse!” he cried. “Probably  _full_  of disease.”

Hermione spent the longest twenty seconds of her life trying to war with her better nature at telling Draco Malfoy he was wearing poor, shabby Ron Weasley’s clothes.  _Handmade_  clothes. She finally succeeded in refraining. 

“What’ll it be?” she drawled at Draco, and he looked up, grey eyes glinting with amusement. He looked almost as tired and haggard in that moment as Harry, and with that wry humor and tiny smirk startlingly like his other aunt, who was raising Teddy, now in kindergarten.

“I’m just...” and he struggled for a moment with the words of an honest confession. “Tired.”

The Pepper-Up Potion was for feeling run down, plus left drinkers smoking at the ears. There was also the Pick-Up Potion, which could cause nausea, Wide Awake Wildpeppers, which could cause flame mouth, and a variety of single apothecary ingredients that could combat fatigue. But Draco knew this. He was a healer. Doubtless he was running them all in his mind too. Testing her. 

Hermione almost smiled as she relaxed. There was nothing she liked more than being tested. She prepared a simple calming draught, perfect for frayed nerves or constant high anxiety. Constant high anxiety - a longterm effect of post traumatic stress. Or in Ginny, Harry, or Draco’s case...complex post traumatic stress, because their childhoods and events hadn’t been a few strung together traumatic events (like her and Ron’s) but rather a pervasive way of living through abuse and cultism. 

He tasted the whiskey sour with a wry grin that said he secretly liked them, but his smile actually garnered warmth on its glittering edges when he recognized the contents. 

“Very smooth, Granger,” he said quietly as the restorative took effect. “To get my limbic system to stop firing. To help me go home and actually fall asleep.”

“The very best medicine,” she told him, and had a strange feeling that they weren’t joking anymore.

“Thank you.” And prick that he was -  _knowing better_  - he paid her in magical money she would have to exchange for her own for the register before he turned on the spot and was gone, leaving only the napkin spelled clothing (tied neatly back together) and a careful script on the top:  _next Thursday_. 

* * *

 

Thursdays became a regular Draco Day, and in the six-month that Hermione had begun bartending at the muggle pub, she had garnered a whole set of regulars both muggle and wizard on specific days. Ron and Harry came Monday nights after work. Harry came alone again on Wednesdays. 

“This is literally impossible,” he told Hermione in frustration over the Windows XP logo as it booted up the laptop she kept to work on at home. It was twenty times faster than paperwork, and Harry had become so enamored he had gone and bought his own for Auror work, though it never got service in the Ministry itself. 

“It’s difficult,” Hermione corrected, though with a sinking heart. It  _was_  looking impossible. Harry had decided to start dating through the online profile she had made him set up half a year before. Because of his fame - or perhaps infamy - in the wizarding world, Harry had decided to stick to dating in the muggle one. The only problem was-

“All the dates I’ve been on with girls have been utter  _failures_ ,” Harry reminded her. “We had  _nothing_  to talk about. Pretending to be in Interpol is impossible. I know next to nothing about it. Dudley wouldn’t ever let me watchhis shows growing up, much less classics like _the X-Files_.”

“It’s not so bad,” Hermione tried weakly to defend. “I tell my customers about my life...with muggle modification, of course.”

“But that’s just it Hermione - I don’t  _have_  a life!” exploded Harry into his third beer. “I have  _work_. And my work is a lie, getting to be... And I don’t do  _anything_  for fun, and saying that I stopped a dark wizard from rising to power when I was seventeen isn’t exactly a conversation starter!”

Harry’s loud temper had drawn several glances from around the bar, and Hermione sent a wordless pulse through his concealment glamor to turn the eyes back downwards to their own drinks. She was hoping the little bit of courage she had spiked into the daughter’s mojito would nudge her towards coming out to her mother across the table. She was watching them absently, already ready to start a calming draught or a delirium powder whichever way it went. 

“Well you could always try witch-”

“ _No.”_ And Harry said it so forcefully, so convincingly, Hermione gave up before she started. There were happy tears from the table in the corner. She quietly began the delirium powder to make it a night to remember for mother and daughter.

“Well there’s the other alternative.”

“You mean men?” Harry said moodily. He had never actually  _dated_  another man. Just a quick snog in a back alley when he was totally smashed with a nameless stranger that awakened so many realizations inside him. That perhaps  _no_ , people did not envy Percy Weasley for sharing a dormitory with Oliver Wood at night. Or  _yes, shit gods, merlin’s beard he had been so blind_ , perhaps Lupin and Sirius had been a bit more than best mates.

“Yes, men, Harry. They’re not all terrible,” said Hermione briskly, though she wasn’t sure she believed it. The customers she got, however, were always unfailingly polite and a bit in love with her, to her bemusement. Only once did she have an unpleasant experience with a rowdy customer trying to handle her, and he had lost six teeth from the three different assailants who had come to her (quite capable) aid. 

“I know,” said Harry, in a low, guilty voice that made Hermione look up from the delirium daiquiris she was providing. She sent them floating without her help to the table, a muggle  _look away_  charm emanating. The mother and daughter didn’t remember ordering the drinks, but were eager to get them, both in floods of tears and giggles. Hermione rarely used such obvious magic in the presence of muggles, but having an in with the Minister himself did come in handy at times.

“What happened?” Hermione said, leaning on her elbows over the bar to peer into Harry’s face as he ducked it more and more guiltily into his drink.

“Well..I’ve tried them,” said Harry.

“ _Harry_ ,” and Hermione’s comforting, sisterly, nagging tone was alarmed. “Harry you have to be  _careful!_ In this day especially-”

“Not like that,” said Harry, going blood red. “I just...updated my profile finally.”

“And?” Hermione felt the knot in her stomach unclench. She worried about Harry. He was a bit of an idiot. So was Ron but Harry...well Harry was her little brother. He was just...so sure he was right, that he knew best all of the time, usually to disastrous results. He could use a little caution, even if she did overdo the Jiminy Cricket consciousness whenever he confided in her.

“And...it’s  _gross!”_ Harry said, appalled and annoyed, and too loud again. “Every single message is a creepy meet up location in a bad part of town. And I know that I have magic and I can defend myself and I mean I’m not scared so much as-”

“Disappointed?” asked Hermione wryly.

“Exactly.”

“Welcome to the world of liking men,” sighed Hermione. “I don’t know what it is that makes them all make the worst possible first impression.”

“Or just want their dicks sucked!” Harry said in annoyance. “I get that one all the time! From a lot of older blokes too. Creepy.”

“Harry,” and Hermione was pleading with him again for patience. “You’re twenty-two. Of course there will be creepy men on the internet hoping you’ll suck them off.”

Harry made a disgusted face. “Do you ever think it’s good that wizards don’t have internet?”

Hermione sighed as she began mixing a Manhattan for a poor girl who had a truly appalling workweek. Her secret twist was cherry and a forgetfulness charm just light enough to take the sting and humiliation from the events without forgetting the events themselves. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I feel like the ads would be appalling.”

“Bet the porn would be good though,” said Harry moodily, and Hermione was so surprised, she both barked a laugh and smashed her glass on the ground. A quick repairing spell saved a trip from the manager. 

“ _Harry_ ,” she said in fond exasperation. 

“Hermione,” he teased back. “I’m only mostly joking.”

“Sorry your luck is so poor,” she told him. “Maybe you can come back tomorrow and we can find a new site. But right now I see a university group coming in and-”

“Alright!” called Harry over the sudden influx of noise. “Tomorrow!” and he was gone in a pop.

 

 

* * *

  

It was Thursday. Hermione liked Thursdays. It was her last shift of the week, and even though it was rowdier on Thursdays than her other two days, most of the crowds were office workers getting drinks together, and a pitcher of beer would placate the lot of them. Plus she got to see Draco, who was increasingly becoming - to both their astonishments - her friend. 

Draco had started to frequent the pub as a means of escaping the glares, and hisses, and dark whispers about the mark on his arm (always carefully covered), his last name, and his role in the war, so much so that he had considered leaving Britain and starting over in New Zealand or some place where he could be a healer in peace. But it was impossible, of course. His father and mother were here. And the fact that his father was looking weaker and more run down than ever before in the years after the Battle made Draco positive that he - the only son - could never leave in good conscience. 

“The usual?” Hermione teased him, reaching for the Riesling when he walked in - dressed much more appropriately (if still  _too well_ ) in a grey suit and black tie. He wore a three piece suit, for merlin’s sake, and product in his slicked back hair. He stood out in the small pub on a town road like a hag’s boil. Even the other muggle office workers in their rumpled slacks and loosened ties only marked the contrast. 

“No, please, something stronger,” and Hermione was surprised to note Draco looked haggard. “I’ve been up for two days.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking then,” frowned Hermione severely, pushing the nozzle on the hose to water and giving him the cup. 

“You’re a bartender,” Draco snapped with some of his old testiness. “Serve me.”

Hermione did not have to ask what he wanted in order to look for the oldest scotch and pour it neat (in a magically frosted glass to cool it). Draco drank it without glancing once appreciatively at the amber coloring and tapped with two fingers. He was sometimes so dramatic, Hermione wanted to scream. Instead, she took out her mobile phone and took another picture to savor the memory. She had quite the collection going on her laptop from over the months, but none was as good as the first one she had taken of Draco in Ron’s clothes. 

“Why do you  _do_ that?” snapped Draco.

“Muggle-ism,” said Hermione absently, filling his glass again. 

“Aren’t you going to ask if I ‘want to talk about it?’“ Draco parroted scathingly.

“Don’t get your knickers in a wad,” said Hermione snappishly, echoing words he had once thrown at her.

“’Ignore him!’“ Draco chirped back in his prissiest voice. “‘Oh Harry, just  _ignore_  him.’“

“Well it worked, didn’t it?” said Hermione, cracking a guilty smile. 

“Not quite,” said Draco, also smiling a bit. “I was still obsessed with ragging on you two.”

“They say little boys pull hair because they  _like_  someone,” teased Hermione. “My what an unpalatable thing for Daddy to hear his son liked a -”

“Boy.”

Hermione stopped teasing at once, swallowing hard. “It was H-Harry?” and she didn’t mean for her voice to crack, but Draco swung a long slim leg under the bar stool to cross it as he smiled wryly, drinking down his third scotch in a row.

“Oh yes, the boy who lived,” he said quietly. “The only thing my father wouldn’t be able to swallow...even  _more_  than marrying a mudblood like my aunt had...”

Hermione flushed hot and red and white. She both wanted to defend Andie and herself and also to shrink up and boil away in her simmering cauldron.  

“And he was was the downfall of our great  _lord_ ,” and Draco sneered over the word. “And we were on opposite sides from the day we met in Diagon Alley.”

“Well...but in the end you...your parents and you...” Hermione fumbled. Despite six months of regular contact they had never  _once_  broached the taboo topic. 

“Saved my parents from prison, you mean?” Draco laughed nastily, and Hermione couldn’t help her gaze from flickering to his right forearm.

“Want to see it?” Draco asked harshly. “You could just  _ask.”_

“No,” and Hermione was mortified at her tiny whisper as much as his pique. “I just...I mean...I’m sorry. I-”

“Easy to be on the winning side,” said Draco morosely. “No one asks what you did to be there.”

“You’re...you’re on the right...and you...you’re a healer now. And you’re good if anything I’ve heard is true.”

“You shouldn’t listen to what people say about me,” said Draco in a strange voice, finally finished rolling up his sleeve and draping his suit jacket across the back of the chair. In a crisp white shirt (and pocketing his cufflinks) he looked more like the rest of the bar, save his vest.

The dark black ink was slowly being revealed, and Hermione blushed, looking down to refill his drink for a fourth time when the white and red caught her eye. The skull and snake was marred, horribly so, with unaligned skin, scars, and deep marks. It had obviously been cut into again and again and healed over so that it no longer resembled what it had once been. 

“Have I shocked you?” and Draco’s drawl was suddenly quite drunk, as if it had all hit him at once.

“N-no,” stammered Hermione, and she hesitated before rolling up her own black long sleeves. The manager had told her (hinted) several times she would get better tips with shorter clothing, but she had firmly ignored him and still raked in so much money for the house he had finally accepted it as a quirk and dared not to question his good fortune.

“Don’t,” and Draco’s voice was ragged, ravaged. “Please. God. Don’t show me that. Not what happened in  _my house_...not while I listened to you-”

“You showed me yours,” said Hermione in a strangely dissociated voice, not listening, not caring, suddenly feeling the imperative need that Draco  _see_  and-

“Oh.” 

Hermione’s own right arm, marred with a single slur of an epithet carved by Draco’s own family had also been ripped and resealed, almost lost in a tangled of long-healed marks, whiter than Draco’s fresh ones. 

“Right after,” she said quietly in answer. “The year after. I couldn’t stand to...to look at it.”

“Yes,” said Draco quietly, rolling his sleeve back down and fitting the cufflinks through without even fiddling for them, drunk as he was.

Draco pulled the fourth scotch down his throat and Hermione leaned on her elbows, which were getting small calluses from doing it so often. She couldn’t think of a single clever transition, so she only blurted: “So you like men?”

Draco actually laughed a bark of a laugh. “Subtle, Granger. Very subtle.”

“Did you ever...at Hogwarts...”

“If you’re asking about Goyle and-” he skipped the name for a harsh laugh. “No, merlin’s beard no. Just look at them. Furry gorillas. Piggish. Couldn’t count four knuts of sense between the two of them.”

Hermione glanced down at the bar, her cheeks heating. She had thought- Well, she was half right. He had liked them both. He had nagged them  _both._  Her brain flooded with a mix of mortification and delirious laughter.  _How was she going to tell Harry...._ and _was_ she going to tell him?

“Yes,” Draco said quietly, in response to thoughts Hermione most certainly was not thinking, having been immersed in her own. “Blaise and I...a few times. Just kids.”

“I...er...” Draco was  _far_  too drunk to be having this conversation with her. Whatever had happened in the two days he had been awake, and how much he had drunk before coming to the pub had clearly skewed him into saying whatever was on his mind. 

“‘Mione!” 

“Shit.”

“What’s the problem?” Draco asked, grey eyes glancing around uninterestedly and freezing on Potter, stamping his way in from the snow, weaving around the unusual crowds of Thursday night to his seat at the end of the bar. Only...there was already someone sitting in it.

“Potter.”

“ _Malfoy?_ ”

This seemed to be the extent of their doubly stunned conversation. They both glanced at Hermione at the same time, who almost giggled with the absurdity. She quickly pulled Harry a beer off the tap and set it next to Malfoy with an apologetic grimace at not having his usual seat. Thankfully, the bar was crowded enough that Harry couldn’t refuse, or tried to put a buffer between them, either of which would have hurt the conversation Hermione was suddenly dying for them to have.

Here was Harry, shit out of luck with dating in the wizarding world  _and_  muggle one. He was tired of women, looking for a first...and here was Draco, long held crush (which Hermione had so badly - blushingly! - misread), also interested in men, also very drunk. Hermione was fond first and foremost of Harry, but her new friendship with Draco wouldn’t be so easily trampled as to let him make an ass of himself and ruin the perfect chance for two overworked, lonely hearts to be damaged by such a silly thing as prejudice. 

The more Hermione thought about it, the more excited she became, even as Harry shrugged out of his outer coat to put on the back of his high bar chair, a black battered piece of woodwork that groaned slightly under his still too-thin weight. Harry didn’t eat enough now that he and Ginny no longer saw Mrs. Weasley often enough to keep him fed. Harry didn’t sleep enough either. 

“You look terrible.” 

Hermione had taken a swig of water and choked heavily on it in panic. Draco had always been swaggeringly, cruelly smooth. For him to have come straight out in such an idiotic blunder, ready to put Harry on the defensive, showed him far more inebriated - or far more terrible at picking up people in pubs - than she had accounted him for. 

“Let me make you both a drink,” she blurted. 

Harry was making frantic eye gestures at her that she was refusing to see or react to. They all essentially meant  _HERMIONE. HIM? How long? What? Why didn’t you tell me? Is it the first time? Is he_ drunk?  _My god he is_ so  _drunk. Etc._

“I’ll switch to the Riesling,” said Draco, and his voice had taken on that biting, cold and caustic tone she had grown up with. She had always, always thought it was directed at her out of pure blood spite. How wrong she was.

“I’ll stick to beer,” said Harry, immediately surly himself, almost sneeringly rolling up his own plaid sleeves of his much better working class muggle outfit in direct contrast to Draco’s stiff, buttoned up rich and suave appearance. 

“Scotch it is,”said Hermione in a strained voice. She hesitated after pouring it neat into the frosted glasses below the bar. Her cauldron was empty, but it would be the work of a moment to whip something together. The only problem was, the very potion she wanted was highly illegal to use against someone without government approval or consent. It was a chargeable misdemeanor at the very least. And she didn’t have any pre-brewed veritaserum on hand.

“What are you putting in that?” asked Harry suspiciously. 

“Does that to yours too?” said Draco, almost in spite of himself, slurring his words a bit so that Harry had no doubt he was a mess. 

“Yeah, makes her a good bartender,” said Harry loyally, as if Hermione’s meddling was his favorite trait, rather than the standing annoyed conversation piece every Monday night between him and Ron. Hermione was surprisingly astute. She didn’t need to hear what they needed in their drinks anymore. 

“Nothing is in it,” said Hermione hastily, drawing her hands away from the glasses. “Here.”

Both Draco and Harry snorted in tandem, in ridiculously similar ways, before glancing sidelong at each other. It was an odd game of chicken, and they both drank it straight, not tasting the gulps, both rolling it on their tongues, challenging each other silently to name the potion or charm Hermione laced it with.

“Surprisingly subtle,” said Draco, the way a wine connoisseur might critique a bouquet. “Almost tasteless.”

“The scotch has too overpowering a scent to be given away,” added Harry quickly, challengingly, and Hermione knew he was embarrassed - the way he claimed he wasn’t - at his lack of formal education. The way she displayed her Hogwarts graduation certificate on the wall at work. The way Ginny and Luna had done theirs. The way Harry, Ron, and George did not. Just another tiny crack in his and Ginny’s relationship; just another tiny feather from an owl ready to break the branch it landed on.

“I agree,” and the words were so surprising coming from Draco Malfoy, Harry gaped at him in stupefied astonishment before his mind raced trying to think of another potion he could place it as. It was stupid, really, to try to compete with Malfoy - especially in Potions. Snape had firmly branded Potions to be the most hated of all Harry’s classes, whether they really were more difficult or not, the way a math teacher in his primary had given him panic attacks by threatening to call Uncle Vernon if he kept “forgetting” his school books and pencils. But Harry felt desperate to try. To prove even if Malfoy was smarter, he wasn’t necessarily  _better_.

“Er...it...could be a clear potion. Didn’t see the distillation of the scotch.”

“Clear potions are the strongest, most invidious,” said Draco, glaring at Hermione over the bar. “What did you put in our drinks, Granger?”

Hermione didn’t know what made her do it, only a quick flash of a vial in her hand, ducked up her black shirtsleeve. It was empty, actually. Stupid. It was just part of her basic potions kit kept under the bar. But she felt somehow that it was too good of a chance - whether in earnest or in jest - to not let the joke play out.

“Water?” she asked him sweetly instead. 

“A Granger whiskey sour,” he countered.

Hermione was going to refuse him, honestly, but the manager was hovering, sensing tension, and Hermione quickly began to prepare the drink without another word. Her actions prompted another round of drink orders from others at the bar further to her right, and she set up both whiskey sours with a simple calming draught with an iced cheering charm to help them both acclimate to each other and take down their nervous sniping.

When she had finished another regular patron’s order - a muggle elderly man who never saw his son (a quick charisma shot for the night to help him find other company) - she drifted as unobtrusively as she could down to the far lefthand side of the bar. The manager nodded at her to see if she was alright, and she nodded back. It was customary for her to spend most of Wednesdays talking to Harry and Thursdays talking to Draco, so he probably understood the draw of seeing them together.

However unobtrusive Hermione tried to be (throughout her life, honestly) her hair could not be so. Huge, mountainous, and with a life of its own (even constrained by magical piskie pins) it trembled with every emotion, laugh, breath, sigh, and both Harry and Draco stopped grumbling a reluctant conversation as she approached.

“This one was far easier,” said Draco immediately. “The calming draught?”

“And the cheering charms,” said Harry quickly. “Easy catch.”

“Like you in a quidditch game,” said Draco, and his eyes glanced sidelong at his drinking partner.

Harry grinned in spite of himself. “Still sore about losing, so long afterwards?”

“It’s not losing if you have the best broom, it’s unfair,” snapped Draco.

“I quite agree,” said Harry, surprising Draco even as he set him up to fail. “What was it Hermione said? No one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way on?”

Draco ground his teeth on an ice cube while Hermione’s mind raced.  _It wasn’t working._

 _“_ How’s the online dating going, Harry?” she said quickly, and knew from the completely venomous, infuriated stab of Harry’s glare that she would be in for a royal chewing out later. 

“ _You_  are dating? Aren’t you with the Weasley girl?”

“No,” said Harry shortly, not glancing up from the bar. “We broke up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” drawled Draco, not sounding sorry at all, but rather instead delighted by Harry’s misfortunes. “What a shame you couldn’t marry into that family.”

Harry pushed back the barstool, and Hermione knew she had to intervene before they pushed each other’s worst temper triggers. “Harry is trying to date in the muggle world,” she said quickly.

“Hermione!” and Harry actually yelled her name in annoyance. 

“The muggle world?” asked Draco in astonishment. “Merlin’s beard, whatever for? You could have anyone in the wizarding world.  _Anyone_.”

Hermione did not miss the entendre, and this time it was Draco giving her a warning glare to stay silent if she valued her life. She did.

“That’s just it,” mumbled Harry, embarrassed at his outburst and at talking about this with Malfoy, of all people. “It gets to be...no one really wants me to...I mean...”

“Celebrity syndrome,” laughed Draco shortly. “How sweet.”

“Can’t see many people lining up to date you,” Harry spat aggressively.

Draco stopped laughing and chewed another ice cube from his dry whiskey sour. He was now well and truly smashed. “Can’t say you’re wrong,” he sighed dramatically. “Granger hears about my woes every Thursday.”

“ _Every_  Thursday?” Harry gaped at Hermione, astounded she hadn’t told him of this bizarre reality she seemed to have landed in before.

“It’s the longest shift at the hospital,” said Draco, as if he were following the conversation from his end, instead of missing Hermione and Harry’s. “I always take it.”

“Why?” and Harry was curious in spite of himself.

Draco shrugged. “Everyone hates me anyway. Might as well take what points I can get. And it’s not like I have anywhere to be...or anyone to go home to, as you so  _kindly_  pointed out.”

“I don’t either!” Harry snapped, defensive. “So don’t make jokes about Saint Potter or whatever. I work too. I just...Wednesdays are my days.”

“I figured you came some day,” said Draco in a bored voice. He glanced coldly at Hermione. “You two were never far apart.”

Hermione jumped in before Harry’s mind - which was slowing down now three drinks in - could understand. “No!” she said hastily. “We never! We’re just friends. We’ve always been friends.”

“That Skeeter woman liked a laugh,” said Draco nastily. It was an underhanded blow, since he was the one who had fed her most of her material. 

“You’re an ass,” said Harry flatly.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” laughed Draco snidely. 

“It was truth serum,” said Hermione quickly. 

They both looked at her, aghast. 

“Hermione!” said Harry. “That’s a Class C offense! You could be arrested!”

“Granger,” Draco said at the same time. “That’s so unethical I-”

“You both need to hear the truth!” and she didn’t know why she was so wedded to the joke, but felt it was too late to retract it now. Perhaps because it wasn’t really a joke, but an extension of how she felt as a muggle bartender: like she could help. She could effect real and tangible immediate change, the way she couldn’t in legislation. 

“Draco,” said Hermione, and Draco looked so stunned she had called him by his first name when she so avoided calling him anything at all, he actually stopped talking. “Why do you really work the latest, hardest shift at the hospital?”

Draco stared at her for a moment, but turned to Harry to answer, as if it were a continuation of his question. “Because...I don’t have anything else in my life but work.”

“And Harry! Why are you on a muggle dating website?”

“Because I’m tired of being the Boy Who Lived.” Harry said it automatically, without trying to fight it, and Hermione knew it was only a combination of strong alcohol, a willing audience, and a few tricks that had carried her this far. Harry would never  _not_  fight; not the imperius curse, not legilimency, and not veritaserum. But he said it willingly, making eye contact with her instead of Malfoy on his right, his face heating. 

“And?” she prodded. “Any success?”

Harry shook his head, but hesitated before answering. All three of them seemed to realize he didn’t  _have_  to answer under the compulsion of the question, but was rather choosing to elaborate, drastically changing the atmosphere of the conversation from sniping to serious. “I’m not very interesting to women,” he said a little helplessly. “And I don’t know what I’m doing with men.”

Draco stared at Harry, agog. It was his turn to echo Hermione’s blunt query: “Men?”

“Men, Malfoy. Men. I ride the broomstick. I take it up the butt. Go on, laugh. Tell the world the Boy Who Lived is a stupid bufter who can’t even get anyone to talk to him without being bored out of their skull or hoping for a blow out in the alley for a fiver.”

Draco only stared at him, nonplussed, clearly trying to work through what Harry was saying. It was like treading water in a sea of scotch and whiskey. “What’s a bufter?” he asked finally.

Harry and Hermione couldn’t stop themselves. They both burst into laughter. Draco was miffed for a moment, but at last he began to chuckle too. They only stopped when Harry took the refilled beer from Hermione and said:

“You’re taking this remarkably well. I thought you’d for sure have an aneurysm or a journalist or call an express owl-”

“I like men too.”

“Oh.” Harry stopped, surprised. “But I thought you and Pansy-”

“Oh yes, me and Pansy,” parroted Draco in annoyance. “More like Pansy and a fictional version of me who liked eating-”

“OKAY!” Hermione said hastily, quickly covering the end of the sentence as she moved down to the other end of the bar on the pretense of filling a drink. She stayed away, but within earshot for some privacy.

“No, Pansy and I only snogged a few rounds after the Yule Ball and when we were bored on rounds as Prefects. She was always pushing to do more, and I finally had to tell her I only liked girls about one out of ten times.”

“Bet that went spectacularly,” said Harry into his drink.

“It wasn’t pretty,” said Draco glumly. “She wanted to know, of course, why she wasn’t  _the one.”_  He glanced at Harry. “But seriously, Weasley? I thought you two were a done deal.”

“So did I.”

“Who could she have left you for? Seriously  _who_  could be better for her than-”

“Luna Lovegood.”

“Oh.” Draco processed this for a minute. “ _Oh.”_

 _“_ Yeah,” said Harry finally. “Guess the broom between your legs does beat you both ways.”

“Beater humor,” said Draco dryly. “Clever.”

“Don’t continue it, please,” said Harry testily. “If you say ‘I’m a keeper,’ I might throttle you.”

“I’m honestly surprised you haven’t tried to already.”

Harry paused, feeling the mood, and feeling the drug - perhaps? maybe? he had never quite felt it - push him into abject honesty. 

“I never hated you, you know.”

“Well I hated you,” said Draco testily.

“Thanks.”

“I hated you for your friends,” Draco continued ruthlessly, “and for being better at quidditch and for being famous and for being liked. And everything I did always inferior - never like  _Potter._  Never like-”

“You  _ran_  that school!” Harry argued back. “You made stupid petty badges that said I  _stink_!”

“I wanted to put something else entirely, but Theo suggested we keep it PG for the teachers.”

“You’re  _such_  an ass.”

“I just wanted you to notice me.” The admission came out as a slip. It was obviously unintentional. Or perhaps it was more obviously forced by a laced drink. 

“ _Notice_  you?” said Harry in disbelief. “You were my greatest enemy!”

“Greatest enemy?” and Draco actually laughed. “I wish I had been so puffed up to hear that in school. Being a bigger deal than-”

“Don’t,” said Harry quickly, too quickly. “Let’s not do that part of all of it.”

“Agreed,” said Draco, and they sat quietly a moment, both acutely aware of Hermione busily filling water glasses for a group of girls who had just come in.

“She really is an insufferable know-it-all,” said Draco after a moment, and they both had the satisfaction of seeing Hermione’s eyes flick up and towards them for a moment in angry annoyance before she realized they had known she was listening all along.

“I know,” said Harry, playing along, but a smile playing at his lips. “But she’s ours.”

“Just drugging us at a bar,” sighed Draco, and Harry could smell the alcohol on his breath. Or was it  _his_  breath? He was quite drunk now too, and his beer was empty again.

“But she always serves customers what they need,” Harry argued weakly. 

“And we needed this? To yell at each other?”

“Is that what we’ve been doing?” asked Harry in amusement. “And here I was thinking it was a halfway civil conversation.”

“For us, yes.”

“For us? Is there an ‘us’?”

“I wanted there to be.”

“What?”

“Since that day, the very first day of Hogwarts. I didn’t know why, at first. I wanted to collect you - like Slughorn - because my father told me to. To get close to you. And I was so embarrassingly bad at it.”

“You really were.”

“So of course I swung the other direction, hard.”

“Jokes.”

“Ah yes, sexual humor. Hilarious.”

“Given the circumstances.”

“Given the company, you mean.” Draco glanced at Harry again, and realized Potter had taken off his glasses and was rubbing between his eyes.

“You realize there are muggle contraptions that make glasses pointless.”

“You mean Lasik?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know,” said Harry sighing, putting them back on. “I’ve thought about it. Maybe letting my hair grow out even more to change my appearance beyond immediate recognition the  _Prophet_  has afforded me all these years.”

“If you ever brushed it, maybe.”

“Thanks.”

“It looks quite terrible.”

“We can’t all dress like you.”

“Why not?”

“Money.”

And Draco stared at him, stupefied. “But you’re rich too.”

Harry laughed in surprise. “Honestly? I forget. And I would only look stupid if I did. Just let my hair grow out and take my glasses off.”

“You would not.”

“I’m only twenty two. I’d look like a child playing dress up.”

“I’m only twenty three.”

“And you look like a model.”

Draco was unexpectedly pleased by the annoyed retort. “You think I’m good looking?”

“You know you’re good looking. Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Fish for compliments you already know.”

“Like how you don’t like to hear you’re good on a broomstick?”

They both heard the entendre and laughed nervously.

“So you’ve...never?” Draco began at last, and Harry shook his head.

“I thought about it. I dunno. Just...didn’t seem right. I sometimes think I should just do it and get it over with.”

“That’d be a bad idea with someone you don’t know well. Things can go wrong.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Disease.”

“You’re the healer.”

“Possible death.”

“Ha, ha, Malfoy. Funny.”

“Just trying to help.”

“Are you offering your help?”

“Am I-” and Draco blushed - honest to god blushed - to the roots of his blonde white hair. 

“Oh my god, you’re not used to being propositioned,” snickered Harry. 

“No, I-”

“And I thought my whole life you were so incredibly cool and effortless.”

“It was a lot of effort, actually.”

“Probably too much.”

“Definitely too much.”

“I can’t believe you’re so incredibly bad at chatting up people in pubs,” Harry found this disproportionately amusing. 

“Shut up. I didn’t mean to chat you up. I mean, I’m not chatting you up. Unless...unless you want me to erm...I mean...I wasn’t...er...”

“Oh my God, you can stop,” Harry said, actually laughing. “It just gets worse the longer you go on.”

“That’s not what I usually hear,” and Draco didn’t mean to make the joke, as if with a friend, into the silence waiting for his wit. 

Harry choked on his ice cubes and actually spit one back into his cup as he coughed. Hermione saved them both by coming over. 

“That’s enough for both of you,” she said, sliding the water across the table. “But maybe you could drink these?”

“After what you did to us last time?” sniffed Draco. “Doubtful. Potter and I will just have to take our business elsewhere.”

“Your business?” Hermione asked sweetly, and Draco reddened again, his blush creeping from his temples and down his jawline in hot pink streaks.

“It is thirsty Thursday,” said Harry, hopping down with a hard thud from his bar stool. He was decidedly unsteady on his feet. 

“Yes, there’s a wizard bar down the street. We might stop traffic if we pop in.”

“Nah,” said Harry. “My flat is completely empty, save for pets.”

“Pets?” asked Draco, also standing, carefully - too carefully- holding his sleeves as he pulled on his suit jacket.

“An owl, of course. And I got roped into a pygmy puff by George who had too many. And I may have adopted a dog.”

“A dog?”

“By accident.”

“Accident?”

“It was at a crime scene.”

“Christ, Potter.”

“It had nowhere to go!”

“There are shelters for those kinds of things.”

“Classy. I’m sure you’re a cat person.”

“I am, actually. I have a cat.”

“Of course you do. Guess ferrets didn’t grow on you?”

“Low blow, Potter,” said Draco glaring. across the counter at Hermione who had snickered at the memory. 

“Hermione, did you actually -” Harry began, but Hermione had beat him to it. She pulled out the empty vial. 

“I only thought-” and Hermione nodded.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” she said slyly, referring to an incident of felix felicis in their sixth year. “But fool me twice, shame on me.”

“You’re too clever by half,” Harry laughed ruefully. “You fool me all the time.”

“Brightest witch of her age,” said Draco unexpectedly.

“Not so dim yourself,” Hermione said, modestly glowing at the unexpected praise from a source she admired.

“Still a rotten trick,” scowled Draco quickly.

“But I think Hermione knew what she was doing,” Harry defended her, as always. Always, always, always the champion. “She saw two of her friends...”

“Friends?” scoffed Draco. “Are we friends?”

Hermione clutched her forearm, and Draco’s face darkened - as did Harry’s. But both for different reasons. “I hope so,” she said in a low, embarrassed voice.

“I was just...”

“Having me on?” Hermione finished wryly.

Draco smiled at her, a real, full faced smile that transformed his tired wan appearance into that of an interesting, intelligent young man. He turned to Harry. “Are we really going to do this?”

“Propositioning again?” Harry asked.

Draco dropped his face in his hands. “Potter I-”

“I don’t mind.”

Draco actually doubled over at the waist, holding his knees, wheezing with embarrassment and laughter and sheer intoxication.

“You both are so bad at this,” said Hermione cheerfully. “So I’ll help you.”

“Seems we need all the help we can get,” said Harry sheepishly. “Since we couldn’t even talk to each other like civilized adults.”

Hermione laughed, and Draco continued. Finally, Harry joined in, also embarrassed. “Yeah, alright,” he conceded. “Give us your help. Please.”

“Harry,” Hermione asked pointedly. “Would you go on a date with Draco?”

Harry gaped at her, clearly not seeing where she had been leading to. “I...er...”

“He doesn’t have to,” Draco quickly said into the pained silence, all laughter gone from his face, nectar in a sieve leaving only the strain behind.

“No...er...alright. But only if we...you know...go somewhere...”

“Quiet?”

“Yeah.”

“We could come here. On Thursdays.”

“Yeah,” said Harry again, too quickly. “Yeah. I’d like that.”

“But nosy here,” Draco tossed a chin at Hermione.

“You could put up  _muffliato_ ,” said Hermione.

“Like you couldn’t work around that,” said Draco, frowning a smile at her.

“I wouldn’t!” Hermione protested at once, but they both laughed. 

“We know you wouldn’t,” said Harry. “But you  _could.”_

“You said your place was empty?” Draco offered hesitantly. “Just now.”

“I was going to...er..”

“Proposition me?” Draco asked dryly.

“Not in so many words. Just...you know...to talk.”

“Okay.”

“Bye Hermione,” and Harry leaned over the counter to hug her and kiss her cheek, their customary departing greeting on Wednesdays. Draco hesitated, but offered her his hand. It was not lost on either on them as she carefully grasped it of the link between their similarly marred forearms. 

“Thanks, Granger,” said Draco awkwardly. 

“I’ll see you both on Thursday,” she said sweetly. 

And smiling, ducking, awkwardly arranging with a few mumbled directions, they turned on the spot and were gone.

Hermione pulled out her mobile thoughtfully, taking a strange, overly dark picture of the bar and the empty glasses atop it. She suddenly giggled, high and ridiculous. She had just realized it was up to her to break the news to Ron, and she had just the picture to prove it.


End file.
